Rene Descartes was born in the kingdom of France on March 31, 1596. He died in 1650 on February 11. He was a Catholic French guy. His main interests where metaphysics, epistemology, and mathematics. He had one child, Francine Descartes. He was a cartesionist, rationalist, a dualist, and was a foundationalist.
Philosophy
Considered by many the father of modern philosophy, Rene Descartes (pronounced Ren-ae Dae-cart) was also a major influence on western philosophy. His Meditations on Modern Philosophy is still used in many philosophy schools. In this book he basically throws everything out the window and only kept the things that can be known for sure. In fact, in passions of the soul, (a treatise on the early modern version of what are commonly called emotions) he goes so far as to say that he will write on these matters as if "as if no one had written them before". His philosophy comes from Aristotelianism, revised Stoicism, and other philosophers like Augustine. He laid the foundation for 17th century rationalism. This includes philosophers like Baruch Spinoza and Gottfried Lebiniz. Opposing these philosophers are the empiricists like Hobbes, Berkeley, Locke, and Hume. Probably by far his most famous phrase is "cogito ergo sum" which means "I think therefore I am".
Descartes is regarded as the first thinker to develop natural sciences using reason. He expressed it in this way.
"Thus, all Philosophy is like a tree, of which Metaphysics is the root, Physics the trunk, and all the other sciences the branches that grow out of this trunk, which are reduced to three principals, namely, Medicine, Mechanics, and Ethics. By the science of Morals, I understand the highest and most perfect which, presupposing an entire knowledge of the other sciences, is the last degree of wisdom."
In his discourse of method, he arrives at only one point: thought exists. Put simply, the way he arrived at this conclusion is "if one is skeptical about existence, than he must exist". If you are not sure of existence, that means that there has to be some existence to be unsure of. But in what form? You can use the senses to perceive the world, but these have recently been proven unreliable. So he concludes that he can only know that he is a thinking thing. He says that thinking is everything that can be immediately perceived by the conscious.
He was also a dualist. He believed that the body was like a machine and the mind was non-material and doesn't go along with the laws of nature. He voices this in Passions of the Soul and The description of the Human Body. He also said that the mind interacts with the body through the pineal gland. This has some truth to it since the hypothalamus is the link between the endocrine system and the nervous system. The brain is where thought occurs and the endocrine system releases horomones like adrenaline.
His ethical view was that ethics is a science. Like the rest of the sciences, ethics had roots in meta physics. He believed these things:
God exists
Mind body dualism
Defends free will
Humans should seek sovereign good
Aristotle's belief of good fortune leading to happiness
Rene Descartes
An Extremely Short Biography
Rene Descartes was born in the kingdom of France on March 31, 1596. He died in 1650 on February 11. He was a Catholic French guy. His main interests where metaphysics, epistemology, and mathematics. He had one child, Francine Descartes. He was a cartesionist, rationalist, a dualist, and was a foundationalist.Philosophy
Considered by many the father of modern philosophy, Rene Descartes (pronounced Ren-ae Dae-cart) was also a major influence on western philosophy. His Meditations on Modern Philosophy is still used in many philosophy schools. In this book he basically throws everything out the window and only kept the things that can be known for sure. In fact, in passions of the soul, (a treatise on the early modern version of what are commonly called emotions) he goes so far as to say that he will write on these matters as if "as if no one had written them before". His philosophy comes from Aristotelianism, revised Stoicism, and other philosophers like Augustine. He laid the foundation for 17th century rationalism. This includes philosophers like Baruch Spinoza and Gottfried Lebiniz. Opposing these philosophers are the empiricists like Hobbes, Berkeley, Locke, and Hume. Probably by far his most famous phrase is "cogito ergo sum" which means "I think therefore I am".Descartes is regarded as the first thinker to develop natural sciences using reason. He expressed it in this way.
"Thus, all Philosophy is like a tree, of which Metaphysics is the root, Physics the trunk, and all the other sciences the branches that grow out of this trunk, which are reduced to three principals, namely, Medicine, Mechanics, and Ethics. By the science of Morals, I understand the highest and most perfect which, presupposing an entire knowledge of the other sciences, is the last degree of wisdom."
In his discourse of method, he arrives at only one point: thought exists. Put simply, the way he arrived at this conclusion is "if one is skeptical about existence, than he must exist". If you are not sure of existence, that means that there has to be some existence to be unsure of. But in what form? You can use the senses to perceive the world, but these have recently been proven unreliable. So he concludes that he can only know that he is a thinking thing. He says that thinking is everything that can be immediately perceived by the conscious.
He was also a dualist. He believed that the body was like a machine and the mind was non-material and doesn't go along with the laws of nature. He voices this in Passions of the Soul and The description of the Human Body. He also said that the mind interacts with the body through the pineal gland. This has some truth to it since the hypothalamus is the link between the endocrine system and the nervous system. The brain is where thought occurs and the endocrine system releases horomones like adrenaline.
His ethical view was that ethics is a science. Like the rest of the sciences, ethics had roots in meta physics. He believed these things:
- God exists
- Mind body dualism
- Defends free will
- Humans should seek sovereign good
- Aristotle's belief of good fortune leading to happiness
- Good fortune is random
These are Descartes on ethics.Sources
Major Works
Major sayings
- http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/r/rene_descartes.html
There are far to many of his quotes for me to put down here.